The forthcoming general election is going to be the United Kingdom's first e-election. The internet was still only patchy in its uptake in the UK four years ago and the Blair government has made it a focus of policy. But for all that, very few votes are going to turn on the existence of e-technology in a month's time.
The same applies to the county elections also taking place on June 7. "I would be very surprised if the internet figured," says Geoffrey Filkin, leading light of the New Local Government Network and a keen advocate of councils using the new technology to renew their links with the public.
A quick skim at how MPs and councillors use email and the web (see www.parliament.uk and www.lga.gov.uk) confirms that whatever inroads communications technology has made into politics, the parties are still largely innocent of it. However, some are enthusiastic. There are marginal urban seats where sitting MPs are considering email and even text message campaigns to reach younger voters.
Even if no one is going to vote for a party on their policy for ecommunications and the internet, they will play a polit ical role. Manifestos will be published online and other party information will be easily accessible. Patrick Seyd, professor of politics at Sheffield University P.Seyd@Sheffield.ac.uk, says internal party communications will make heavy use of email and the internet. Party agents are finding it "an extraordinarily effective mechanism for contacting members and candidates".
But Seyd's studies suggest emails and bulletin updates help the control freaks at party headquarters keep an even tighter grip.
As for the public, it looks as though research conducted in the United States will be proved right here. The internet is a "to them that hath" medium. Electors who want information about the parties and their manifestos will make active use of it, just as they do newspapers and other media. The uninterested and the uninspired will not.
Ian Kearns of the Institute for Public Policy Research thinks some MPs will have no choice but to run "viral" email campaigns to reach voters who are impervious to print and television. "If a party or candidate shows up in cyberspace, people might just bother reading the material they get - though they might have to be predisposed to the party already for the tactic to work."
He gives the example of young urban professionals dashing in from work, pausing briefly to read their emails before showering and setting off for an evening out.
There will be a lot of politics online in the next few weeks. There is a fair listing of sites at www.ukpolitics.org.uk/links.shtml. Labour will crank up its rebuttal machine, Excalibur, press conferences will be webcast, ministers and candidates will take part in online chats.
Thanks to the internet, campaigning is likely to be faster and slicker, says James Crabtree, the Industrial Society executive and founder of www.voxpolitics.com which is putting itself forward as the online guide to the election.
The site is sponsored by the Stationery Office, the private company (owned by venture capitalists Apax) which took over most of the publishing work of HMSO and has the backing of the IPPR on the left and the Social Market Foundation and the Institute for Economic Affairs on the right.
Voxpolitics' argument is portentous. "We live in troubled political times. Across the western world, our democracies suffer declining participation, low voter turnout, and a growing sense of apathy. Politics and politicians face an increasingly sceptical and suspicious public and our civic institutions, erected with pride in an earlier period of confidence."
If this is true, how will the internet change the trends? Evidence from last autumn's presidential election in the United States suggests people accessing the internet for news and views are the same people who are also serious consumers of television and the printed press. (See the research at http://netelection.org/research/jan10report.pdf , www.pewinternet.org/reports/toc.asp?Report=27 and http://democracyonline.org/databank/dec2000survey.shtml
Email is now an important, though not always serious, instrument of communication. In the US, twice as many people sent or received jokes as got information about political campaigns.
The technology, says James Crabtree (see www.indsoc.co.uk/isociety) lowers barriers to entry and speeds up the "cycle" of news. He says that there are enough undecided voters out there using email to justify the parties' interest.
If they do not, Voxpolitics warns, they are done for. "The only politics, and the only kind of politician, that can thrive in this climate, is one that actively and continuously seeks the views and concerns of the voter."
In a world where voting for Big Brother is so easy, the IPPR's Ian Kearns predicts, the political system will have to become much more interactive. Perhaps. But the contest due to take place next month will look very much like political business as usual.
